Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires 22 magnum vs 22 lr

What can you do with a magnum, that you can not do with a 22LR?

A 22 magnum extends your range just a tad and it has more knock down power for yotes than a 22 lr does. My 22 magnum is also a lot more accurate than my 22 lr because of the new style polymer tipped bullets made for them. BSA.

The 22 mag is a much better killer than the 22 lr especially when the distant gets longer and the target gets bigger.

The bullets offered in 22 MRF ammo are much better suited to hunting anything larger than squirrels and rabbits then any 22 LR bullets that I've seen/used.

Jeff

You can spend 3X more for the Mag ammo over the LR ammo. True there is some extra energy and the bullets are jacketed and some have polymer tips. The mag seemed to add about 50 yards over the LR for me. The .17HMR adds another 25 yards to the mag. ie: reasonable accuracy .22lr 75-100yds, .22mag 100-150yds, .17HMR 150-175yds.

The difference being that 17HM2s and 17HMRs don't kill heavier/tougher critters, like coons, nearly as well as the 22 MRFs do.

EDIT: Add to this comment, "in my experience" and, because hunting situations are highly variable, "YMMV". This is my experience and I don't claim it to be the only right/correct outcome, just a reflection of my experience.

Jeff

+1

The 22 Mag. has better 'splat' factor.

Been using one for my "porch gun" lately.

Kills "rodents" lots "deader" (is that a word?)

Virgil B.

When using the 17HMR, most folks take shots up close(inside 75 yards) on large Vermin with the highly frangible 17g VMax slugs. When the little bullets open up too quickly on contact and don't penetrate enough , they claim the round is inadequate. It's a bullet construction problem for tough targets inside about 75 yards- not a cartridge problem.

It would be the same as some idiot claiming a .300 Magnum is "inadequate cartridge " because a lightly 150g slug did not penetrate enough for a quick kill on a deer's shoulder up close. Use a slug a bit tougher for the given impact velocities up close- and all is well.

There there are MANY more bullet choices available for the 17HMR than the Mach 11 ONLY is available with 17g V-Max slugs.

Use a 17HMR with either the tougher 17G HP or 20g HP /XTP slugs and there will be no problems as long as the bullet is put in the right place -all will be fine.

you can legally hunt turkeys with a 22 magnum here, but not a 22 lr

In my experience, no 17HM2 or 17HMR bullet that I've fired into a critter weighing over 8 lbs. has killed said critter as well as the heavier 33 to 45 grain bullets from the 22 MRF do so regularly. Being a rimfire cartridge, its not as though a person can load a particular bullet for a particular purpose, so with the 17HMR you're stuck with mostly fragile bullet that are designed to expand on contact or hollow points that don't expend quickly enough, or don't expand at all, and therefore don't kill heavier/tougher critter, like coons, nearly as well as the 22 MRFs do. Or at least that is the distillation of my experience, but as with many things, YMMV.

Jeff

PS - Who shoots coons at 75 yards? I never seem to shoot coon at over 50' or so.

Your comment about the Coons at 50' proves my point. I said INSIDE 75 yards.
From reading that that post of yours- In your world, there are ONLY the two extremes- 17HMR slugs that open up too fast or those that don't open up at all.

Just what I would expect from someone that tries to tell folks a 17HMR won't kill any better than a 17M2 (even with 500-600FPS more at the muzzle and tougher bullets).

And yes, apprently my mileage DOES vary with rimfires because 30+ years of using them has shown me to I put the slugs in the right place. NONE of them are exactly a 30-06- including the "mighty" .22 mag.

I have seen more lung shot 'yotes run off with .22 mags(any bullet) as I have with anything else- including 22 LRs.

The only common denominator with truly successfully using any rimfire on bigger stuff is you have to hit the central nervous system or they will travel a ways before they drop. Hit the spine or the brain and they are DRT.

Whatever.

Jeff

Same to ya..

And a .22WMR handgun is a LOT more powerful than the same gun in .22LR. Anything that you can kill with a .22LR rifle, you can kill with a .22WMR handgun, assuming you can hit it equally well (BIG assumption for most of us.). When I shoot a jackrabbit with a .22 WMR handgun, one decent hit does the job. Not so with the same gun with a .22 LR cylinder in it; with that, the hit HAS to be a head shot to put the jack right down.

The 22 mag with the heavier bullet seems to kill coons a little better than the 17 HMR . I have killed 20 or more coons with the 17 HMR and it kills them extremely well as long as you stay away from the shoulder bone which doesn't seem to bother the 22 mag. For animals up to the size of Foxes you can't go wrong with either. The 20 XTP works better than the V-Max when the game gets up to coon size. Pick your on poison they both work if you shoot them straight

Splat factor advantage goes to the WMR indeed.

I find the question about advantage of one or the other either intentionally provocative or remarkably naive...haven't decided which. Each has its place but to suggest one has advantage is a premise floating on a vast sea of assumptions I don't buy. I can kill anything with one that will fall to the other, it's just a matter of how I approach the task.

For shooting jack rabbits, squirrels it seems like the 22 mag has about 4x the killing power of the 22 LR.

Killed thousands of jacks with 22 lr. I used the remington yellow jacket and it hammered them just as good as any 22 wmr. Now the 30-06 on the other hand killed them like it had 4x the killing power

Federal makes a 50 gr. H.P. .22 Magnum and Midway had them in stock when I ordered some to try out. I expect the velocity to be less than the lighter bullets, but that is ok with me, fair trade off. Also, for those who go for a walk with a .22 mag revolver, the round should be a tad better at killing power.